What’s happening at EDM.

Introduction: Peter Trap, Managing Director of EDM Belgium

13-07-2018 | EDM

This month, Peter Trap started his new position as Managing Director of EDM Belgium. With his arrival, the EDM Media Group is investing heavily in data-driven solutions for the Belgian market. Trap aims to expand the activities and create a strong return-on-data position in Benelux.

Who is Peter Trap, in summary? I’ve been involved in the data industry for 25 years, where I’ve held many marketing positions. I've long been familiar with EDM. In 2013, I was working at Bisnode Belgium, which was then taken over by EDM. At that time, I was Director of International Business Development. After this, I worked for a while in Germany as Director of International Sales for The Global Group Dialog Solutions AG. Now I'm embarking on a career at EDM Belgium.

What led you to choose EDM Belgium at this time?I have great respect for the way EDM serves its customers in the Netherlands, and how it achieves growth with smart, innovative solutions to help organisations create value from their databases. But above all, it’s the people and their passion, enthusiasm and drive that allowed me to change course. And some very nice challenges lie ahead of me.

What is the ambition of EDM Belgium?Our ambition is to establish a strong EDM group in the Benelux, with the primary focus on Belgium. Inspired by the success of the Dutch services, combined with the strength of a dynamic team and an innovative range of offerings, I’m confident that I can achieve this together with Luc Bracke and future new colleagues from EDM Belgium.

Our first focus is to adapt EDM’s products and services to the specific conditions of the Belgian market. In doing so, we’ll serve Dutch customers active in Belgium from our office in Brussels. We also aim to expand and roll out our return-on-data vision here.

How do you view return on data yourself?I always tell people the EDM group is like one big family. EDM Belgium is a member of this family. Only we aren’t the big brother, but the little sister. Our aim is to become a full member of the EDM family. The Belgian market, however, is different to the Dutch market. We’re taking the experience and services of EDM – such as the Customer Data Platform – to Belgium, but we’re also getting started with local ingredients. We also want to focus strongly on Data Quality, particularly with our OVL service (death register), a unique offer in the Belgian market. We aim to reach a coverage ratio of 70% in the short term. We also want to build a strong digital offering with the experience and knowledge of EDM Netherlands. Naturally, the current services – the effective achievement of target groups – will be continued.

Another pillar in our aim is to also build a strong digital offering, with the experience and knowledge of EDM Netherlands. In addition, customers can of course still contact us for our current offer, namely the identification of target groups for each successful customer acquisition.

In particular, we need to find out what works well and what doesn’t. From a commercial viewpoint, we need to broaden our target market and visit customers. Current and future partners are very important for this, so we’re currently visiting a lot of companies. There are challenges for us here, but also a lot of opportunities. I think it’s a fantastic challenge, and at Belgian level, I have a lot of “appetite” to make EDM a household name in the Belgian market.

In addition to my daily work, I’m also responsible for Database Network Associates (DNA), a network that brings together twelve European Data Marketing companies (one per country), including EDM Netherlands. We share experiences and knowledge and discuss the challenges facing our industry, such as the GDPR, in order to become stronger together.

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EDM will increase the ROI on your customer data through intelligent and pragmatic solutions in the area of data quality, customer insights and audience targeting. By using advanced technology, consumer information and analyses, data is made accessible, analysed and applied. For example by validating customer data, building dashboards for 360º customer profiles and the segmented targeting of the right online and offline target group.